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Wafers, Almond
Mix thoroughly equal quantities of dry flour and sifted sugar. With every four table-spoonfuls of this mixture that it is intended to use work in two well-beaten eggs, two ounces and a half of chopped almonds or pistachio nuts, a small quantity of fresh yeast, and as much cream as will make a thick batter. Let the mixture settle, and bake the wafers in the usual way.
A formula rather than a recipe: Cassell's gives ratios and expects you to know the wafer iron. Two things need pinning down before you start — how much batter you actually want, and what "the usual way" meant.
- "The usual way" means a wafer ironThese are pressed between the hot plates of a wafer or waffle iron, not spooned onto a tray. A modern pizzelle iron is the closest equivalent; a thin batter cooks in roughly 45 to 90 seconds and should come out pale gold and dry, not browned.
- Scale the base mixtureFour tablespoons of the flour-and-sugar mix is about 2 oz total (roughly 1 oz of each), which with two eggs, 2.5 oz nuts and cream gives perhaps a dozen small wafers. For a useful batch, work in multiples: 2 oz flour and 2 oz sugar takes four eggs and 5 oz nuts.
- The yeast quantity is genuinely vague"A small quantity of fresh yeast" is unquantified in the original. Fresh compressed yeast was sold in blocks by this period; for a batter of this size a piece the size of a pea would be in keeping, but that is a modern guess and the book gives you nothing firmer.
- "Let the mixture settle" is a riseWith yeast in it, the resting period is presumably fermentation rather than just hydration. Thirty to sixty minutes at room temperature, until the surface shows bubbles, is a reasonable modern reading; the gas gives the wafer its lift and a faintly sour depth. Do not let it collapse and go sharp.
- Batter consistency"Thick batter" here means it drops heavily from the spoon and spreads only under pressure from the iron. The recipe calls for cream rather than milk; the extra fat helps keep the wafer from sticking and tends to make it crisp rather than leathery.
- Chop the nuts finelyCoarse almond pieces stop the iron closing evenly and tear the wafer as you open it. Chop to something near a coarse meal. Pistachios would have given green colour as well as flavour.
- ShapingWafers are pliable for only a few seconds off the iron. If you want rolls or cones, curl them around a wooden spoon handle immediately; otherwise lay them flat on a rack to crisp.
- StorageThey soften within hours in humid air. Keep them in a tin with a tight lid and re-crisp in a 300F oven for a few minutes if they go limp.
Wafers are among the oldest of European baked sweets, made since the medieval period between long-handled iron tongs held over the fire — the same kind of tool behind the waffle, the Italian pizzelle and the Norwegian krumkake. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century the wafer iron was familiar enough equipment that the book could dismiss the whole operation as "the usual way" without further comment. The yeast is the archaic detail: leavening batters biologically rather than with baking powder was usual earlier in the century and lingered in wafer and pancake recipes after chemical raising agents had taken hold elsewhere. Almonds and pistachios belong with the other imported luxuries of the Victorian dessert course, and the entry sits in the book's general run of small sweet baked goods.